Acron Group, a leading vertically integrated fertiliser producer in Russia and globally, completed the first stage of adopting business intelligence (BI) as part of its holistic digital transformation programme.
The Qlik Sense data analytics platform integrates data from all of the Group’s key accounting and operations systems (both AIS IAS and MES systems), offering an important source of information for real-time management decisions. Acron has successfully introduced dashboards for analysing warehouse operations, finances, procurement, and production line defects and managing target resources and IT environment.
A key improvement is the digital power control panel: it monitors over 400 sensors installed in 20 areas of Acron’s Veliky Novgorod facility that collect power consumption data, which was previously calculated with a delay. With this BI solution, the power supply shop monitors power consumption online, promptly detects network issues, and prevents overruns.
Acron’s chief engineer, Mikhail Yaskevich, explained the efficiency of the new system. ‘Over three months of commercial operation, the analytics platform allowed us to streamline energy consumption planning, and deviations in actual power consumption rates from target rates have decreased to less than 1%’.
Denis Guzanov, head of Acron’s IT Department, is pleased to see other departments taking ownership of BI data. ‘In the early stages of the project, we focused on providing BI as a service. Now each department has proactive employees who use the analytical reports and tailor them to their needs. The departments that piloted BI set a positive example for other departments on BI integration and involving new employees and functions in analytics. The digital power control panel was developed by the business process planning and organising team, which is not part of the IT department. To make it work, the team collaborated with IT and operations departments to collect the necessary data. We already have a pool of new BI initiatives that the Group employees have come up with on their own’.